North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on May 3 watches a children’s football game as he visits the newly remodeled Songdowon International Children’s Camp at Wonsan city in North Korea’s Kangwon province.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

North Korea’s recent barrage of sexist, homophobic and racist attacks on foreign officials, the latest directed towards U.S. President Barack Obama, reflects an anything-goes approach to hitting back against the country’s perceived enemies by state media, experts and defectors say.

And while official propaganda does promote the idea of Koreans as being a pure, homogeneous group under siege from aggressors, the use of discriminatory language based on sex or race is rare among citizens inside the country, they say.

North Korean state media has in recent weeks unleashed a barrage of ad hominem attacks on Mr. Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Commentary carried in state media about Mr. Obama’s recent visit to South Korea referred to the president as “a monkey swinging his red bum,” while Ms. Park has been repeatedly called a prostitute.

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Separately, Michael Kirby, a former Australian judge who headed a United Nations’ inquiry into North Korea’s human rights abuses was labeled as “a disgusting old lecher” and was targeted with homophobic slurs by the official Korean Central News Agency.

“Only against enemies, not among friends,” said a North Korean refugee who once served as an intelligence official for Pyongyang, referring to the use of offensive epithets. He added that disrespecting women or other races is rare inside North Korea, especially in public discourse.

The shockingly vulgar language doesn’t represent the general level of uncivility among North Koreans, those who have escaped the country say. Respectful language is a part of North Koreans’ education, dubbed “Socialist Ethics,” according to them.

But like any country that has very limited integration with other races, stereotyping and suspicion develops, defectors and experts say. Even China, North Korea’s closest ally, is viewed with ambivalence, they say.

And officially, racial purity is considered essential and enforced with brutal effect in some cases, such as abortions forced on women who have crossed into China and returned pregnant via Chinese men. Portrayals of American soldiers in propaganda posters often show them with hooked noses or depicted as wolves.

Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, says the highly inflammatory language used in state media is an effort to show loyalty to the regime.

In order to ram home Pyongyang’s disapproval of actions and words from foreign officials, breaking taboos is considered fair game.

“There is no limit,” said Mr. Chang.

On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council responded to the racist attack on Mr. Obama in a statement: “While the North Korean Government-controlled media are distinguished by their histrionics, these comments are particularly ugly and disrespectful.”

South Korea has also objected to the repeated attacks on Ms. Park. On April 28, a spokesman for Seoul’s Unification Ministry referred to the insults as “a sin.”